The Humanities, Globalization, and the Transformation of the University

Worry paces grimly through the corridors of the aging building, its heavy footsteps echoing through empty halls. Cowering colleagues cluster and whisper in fear of an approaching fate, unknown yet foreseen for so long and with such uncanny longing. The setting sun casts dark and lugubri ous shadows through the dusty reading room lined with decaying vol umes, while perched atop the molding above the double-locked door, a raven smirks and quoths: nevermore. Ladies and gentlemen, living and otherwise, the mood in the hu manities these days is not sunny. Doom and gloom abound, predictions of the nearing end are common, while agitated panic and immobilizing despair take turns standing guard at the gates where the barbarians are expected momentarily. How could it be otherwise, given what we see: enrollments wither away, budgets dwindle, and faculty lines disappear silently into the murky night. Students seem to forsake our fields of deep wisdom for the superficial temptations of gilded pathways. This is indeed the preferred explanation of our predicament: the filthy lucre of feared economic forces, which take the forms of the corporate uni versity, preprofessionalism, or the neoliberal venality of globalization, undermines the traditional standing of the humanities, destroying cul ture, while melting our once solid values into the polluted air of mias mic markets.